


Isaiah 41:18

by literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Butch Character, Character Study, Crossdressing, Dreams, Dysphoria, Gen, Lesbian Character, Nightmares, Original Character(s), Surreal, unsafe binding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 15:16:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12038607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte/pseuds/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte
Summary: In that dream there was a city made of chainswhere Joan was put to death in man's clothesand the nature of the angels went unexplained."Consorting With Angels" by Anne Sexton.Azekah investigates the crater in the Mesquite Mountains.





	Isaiah 41:18

The pool of green water before her glows in the midday sun the same way smoke looks in the clear sky. Azekah doesn't have any memories of the sea to compare it to. She thought the mountains were supposed to have fresh air. Up here it smells like rotten eggs and decay, although that could be blamed on the ghoul bodies floating in the water.

Her Geiger counter bleats like an increasingly agitated animal as she continues forward, up to the shack door. She holds out her pistol as she steps inside, but the room is empty and her Geiger counter goes quiet as soon as she shuts the door behind her. It doesn't smell as bad in here, but it isn't quite Vegas. She slots a fresh holodisk in her Pipboy, recites her name and the date, and uses the remaining hours of sunlight left to narrate her expedition here.

She sleeps on a mattress for the first time in what feels like forever. She keeps waking up to what she thinks is the howl of the wind pressing its body against the shack walls, dragging its desperate hands over the windows. Other than that she sleeps fine, dreaming of Benny floating face-down in the water.

In the morning she wakes up with droplets of water _plink, plinking_ on her forehead. Must be a leak in the roof. Her legs are sore from the hike into the mountains so she decides to stay for the night again. She spends the day fixing the hole in the roof, and then she tries to relax, although there's a knot in her shoulders that won't go away. It's the Mojave on her back, she figures. Always have to be on edge.

Outside the shack window, the irradiated water festers in the sun. Every once in awhile something moves under the surface - a shape of a shadow, a shadow of a shape - but Azekah doesn't notice. She doesn't notice the bodies moving, either.

That night she dreams of the water rising until it breaks open the door. It holds her under with its heavy arms and goes into her nose and mouth. She can't drown, can only drink and drink. Her skin goes soft as rotten fruit and peels off, revealing another body underneath, and another body underneath that one. Her vision goes dark and even then the water continues to climb down her throat and change her from the inside-out.

She wakes up gasping for air. The door swings loosely on its hinges even though she propped a chair against it. She pulls out her pistol and checks every inch of the shack, but she finds nothing. Before it gets too hot out, she packs up and leaves.

She walks for hours, but she still can't find anything living to eat. Only dust and dirt and dead trees for miles. Her tongue feels like sand and her head swims. There’s not enough water in her canteen to wet this thirst. By midday the heat is throbbing like a hangover. Sweat pools in the crease between and under her breasts. Three shadows glide over the sand, and she looks up to watch the birds pass above her into the motionless blue sky.

Gunshots in the distance. A muscle in her cheek twitches, but she keeps moving forward. Tracks in the dirt. Claw marks on the rocks. Brahmin picked clean, their skulls gleaming in the desert sun. Rotting human arm with no body to connect it to. The smell of violent death has long since blown away.

She keeps walking, looking for somewhere safe to sleep, hopefully with a roof. The mountains pull the sun into their mouth and suddenly the sky is oily and black. Then, on the horizon, Azekah sees the faint green glow of the water and she feels very, very cold.

This can't be right. She was following the map on her PipBoy. She was going north. She wasn't drinking, wasn't taking chems. She was sober and sane and going /north./

She turns around and goes back downhill, until she's so exhausted she has to stop and make camp. She takes a deep breath when she's done unwrapping the bandages, slick with sweat, around her chest. Her skin is red and tender; she's been binding too long. Another rash, another problem she doesn't want to think about right now.

By the dim light of the dying fire, Azekah inspects the Virgin Mary. She turns the pistol over in her hands, admiring how Maria's face flushes with the reflection of the fire. She aims her at the silhouette of a Joshua tree and fingers the hammer. The wind laughs like coyotes. She squeezes the trigger and the pistol dry-fires with a jerk. She slowly lowers it, and Maria looks relieved when she slips her back into her holster.

Before she goes to sleep herself, she kicks dirt into the smoldering fire. She's too tired to record what happened to her today.

She dreams she is naked in a body of water so large it leaves her breathless. A shape and a space that is illusory, hard to hold onto. Both familiar and unrecognizable. She has missed the soft touch of another woman so much that she is only faintly aware that she is drowning. She does not resist. Azekah closes her eyes, and sinks.

 _Plink, plink._

She can't be here - but she is, and her holodisk replays a memory she does not have, about how she ventured back to the shack last night. The sound of her own voice makes her nauseous. She leaves immediately, going south, and doesn't stop walking for hours. Her rash is getting worse. Her food runs out. Her eyes burn with exhaustion and her stomach turns like the tide.

Finally she gets so tired she has to stop and make camp in the empty desert. As soon as she closes her eyes, the ground shifts beneath her and the water closes in on her. She wants to be seen but not by a man. If a man looked at her and saw a woman, she would drown him. If a woman looked at her and saw a woman - if only there was a woman to look at her -

Around her are the walls of the shack. The ghouls are standing outside, watching her. She walks out to them, into the pool of green light.

**Author's Note:**

> i dont really know how to describe this except as an extended metaphor for lesbian loneliness. [more about my courier here.](https://charahub.com/character/1153807/Azekah) thanks for reading.


End file.
